Vietnam Images.

This is coolbert:

Go here and see very good photographs from the Vietnam War. Described as iconic.

Here with my selection and commentary: [in no specific order or precedence]

 "War makes all of mans' other activities seem trivial by comparison!" - - G.S. Patton. That troop on the ground is standing next to a refueling bladder. Contains AVGAS. NO hat on the solider either. Out of uniform - - but you don't want the hat getting blown off the head and sucked into the engine of one of those helicopters. Might cause a catastrophic crash!!

Within that plastic bag are the remains of a loved one. I think this is in the aftermath of the Battle of Hue, 1968. 4,000 South Vietnamese civilians rounded up and executed by North Vietnamese/VC cadre. A cold-blooded and carefully pre-meditated massacre. Persons executed by the communists, deemed collaborators, "puppets" of the Americans and Saigon government.

"Take your average-everyday Viet Cong and he is willing to lay down in a mud-filled ditch for two days in anticipation of killing an American. Take your U.S. troop and put him in that same situation and after twenty minutes he wants a cigarette" - - L.B. Johnson [some military advisor must have told Johnson that anecdote]. Sometimes American soldiers HAD to get down in that mud filled ditch too!!


The South Vietnamese National Police commander, General Loan, executing a captured enemy. The Tet Offensive - - Saigon - - 1968. Perhaps no photograph created more of stir during the war this particular image. Really created a lot of consternation in the U.S. and around the world for that matter. I am not sure if the doomed man [Lem] was a North Vietnamese soldier or Viet Cong. In either case, caught at the National Police Headquarters in civilian dress. General Loan has asked just prior to the shooting: "where was this man captured??" "Lém [the doomed man] was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives"

INCLUDING FOUR SMALL CHILDREN WHOSE THROATS WERE CUT, THOSE CHILDREN HAVING GENERAL LOAN AS THEIR GODFATHER!!

NOW you know the rest of the story!

Iconic photographs and images. For some reason I am particularly fond of the black and white photograph. And too, those photographers, each respectively, intuitively or not, have added an ARTISTIC FLAIR TO EVERYONE OF THE IMAGES, perhaps not even realizing they had done so at the time!!

coolbert.